Understanding the differences between SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004

The most important difference between the two SCORM versions is in how they track a learner's success. 

The SCORM format uses two verbs to define a learner’s success status in the course. They are:

• Completed: achieved by gaining progress through completing pages and interactions 
• Passed: achieved by gaining score answering questions on scored pages

The success verbs, and data like score value, progress, and answers are reported to your LMS which then uses the information to determine whether or not the learner has been successful. The thresholds at which these success verbs are awarded can be set in your Project. See Setting a Completion and Pass rate in your Project for more information.

While SCORM 1.2 and SCORM 2004 both use the same success verbs, their applications of them differ slightly. Read on for a breakdown of each type and recommendations on when to use them.

Contents

1. SCORM 1.2

i. Using the Completed success verb

ii. Using the Passed success verb

2. SCORM 2004

i. Editions

3. When using a Backup SCORM release

SCORM 1.2

SCORM 1.2 is the most widely adopted version of SCORM and it is considered the industry standard. You’ll find that most LMSs will be able to support SCORM packages created in this version.

In SCORM 1.2 courses, only one success verb can be reported to an LMS. 

You can choose which success verb is used in your Project's settings. See Applying the correct tracking mode to your course to learn how to do this.

Using the Completed success verb

A SCORM 1.2 course using Completed will report only the learner’s progress to the LMS and use their progress percentage to determine whether they’ve been successful.

A successful learner will receive the Completed success verb.

If the learner has achieved a score, this will still be recorded in the course (which means that you can still use features like Clips showing a score or score-based Rules) but it will not be reported to the LMS or used to determine whether or not they’ve been successful. 

When should I use this?

This tracking mode is suited more to courses where the learner is required to complete pages and interactions to learn a topic. There typically won’t be any scored pages in these courses, or if they do have scored pages, the learner’s score and whether they pass or fail is not the primary definition of success. 

Using the Passed success verb

A SCORM 1.2 course using Passed will use the learner’s score to determine their success instead of their progress.

A successful learner will receive the Passed success verb.

Progress is still recorded in the course so you can still use features like progress-based Rules and progress locking but it will not be reported to the LMS or used to determine whether or not the learner has been successful.

When should I use this?

This tracking mode is suited more to courses where the learner needs to achieve a certain score to prove their knowledge or pass a set of questions for compliance training. 

SCORM 2004

SCORM 2004 is the current version of SCORM. While it has been widely adopted, it isn’t as broadly compatible as SCORM 1.2.

SCORM 2004 can report both the Completed and Passed success verbs simultaneously. This means that you do not have to choose which definition of success you’d prefer to use for your course. 

Editions

There are several different editions of SCORM 2004 as the standard has been iterated upon:

• 2nd Edition
• 3rd Edition
• 4th Edition

Elucidat supports exporting content in all three editions. As far as reporting success is concerned, each edition essentially works the same—there are no functional differences in how they report success.

However, newer versions of SCORM have iterated on the range of information that can be transferred between the package and the LMS. This may mean that they have slight differences in the additional data they can report but this can also be dependent on whether the LMS is configured to interpret this data and whether our SCORM package sends that data in the first place. We recommend consulting the SCORM website and your LMS provider's documentation if you're interested in understanding the format more.

When should I use this?

SCORM 2004 is great for courses where tracking both the learner’s progress and their score is required.

This does mean that it is possible to achieve one of the success verbs without the other. For example, a learner can achieve Completed but not Passed if they have achieved a high enough progress percentage but not a high enough score. This can be useful if you're looking for greater tracking flexibility and detail.

However, for courses with no scored questions or where the learner’s progress isn’t important, you may not need to track both. In this case, SCORM 1.2 might be more appropriate.

When using a Backup SCORM release

These formats also differ in how much suspend data the Backup SCORM release type can hold for bookmarking. Backup SCORMs are the only release type we offer that uses suspend data for bookmarking.

• SCORM 1.2 has 4,096 character limit.
• SCORM 2004 (2nd edition) has a 4,000 character limit.
• SCORM 2004 (3rd edition) and (4th edition) have a 64,000 character limit

The other release types use Elucidat's bookmarking micro-service and aren’t subject to these limitations. You can read more about this in Understanding bookmarking in Elucidat.